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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737249">Beyond Words</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoMoreTears707/pseuds/NoMoreTears707'>NoMoreTears707</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A liiittle of Eruri &amp; Eremika, Ackertalk, F/M, Gen, I would say is more a gen fic than M/M or F/M, Levi &amp; Mikasa Ackerstruggling (?), Levi remembering Erwin, M/M, Manga Spoilers, ackerbond</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:22:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,225</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoMoreTears707/pseuds/NoMoreTears707</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikasa Ackerman is the only person alive who could understand the meaning of the secret that Levi is not willing to confess to anyone else.</p><p>***</p><p>Levi and Mikasa speak briefly about their feelings for Erwin and Eren. A.K.A my own version of the infamous Ackertalk 2.0.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Levi/Erwin Smith</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>178</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Amazing AOT Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Beyond Words</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>WARNING!!!</p><p>Manga spoilers (up to chapter 132). Please, if you're not up to date with the manga close this window asap. </p><p>Thanks! ♥</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> <em>(Can't you see I'm sick of fighting)</em></p><p>
  <em> (Can't you tell I've lost my way)</em>
</p><p>
  <em> (Look at me, there's no denying)</em>
</p><p>
  <em> (I won't last another day)</em>
</p><p>—Placebo, <strong>A Million Little Pieces</strong></p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p><strong>I</strong>t would be great to be able to explain why he used to stay up so late with two empty cups on the table; telling the truth instead of making up stupid excuses, like when he says he stayed up thinking about cleaning, whatever, as long as it sounds believable. Anything that keeps him from having to admit what is so oppressive under his silences, right in the place from where they come.</p><p>His heart.</p><p>How easy it would be to make himself clear just by saying a word, just by confessing a secret, like giving his heart to someone and telling them <em>this is the problem</em>, <em>this is what I feel</em>. But the weight of that word is a knot that squeezes his neck and holds back the words, like a knife through his vocal cords.</p><p>If only he could say everything he feels, all the shit he has inside his chest, all those images he needs so badly to tattoo on his memory, all those sounds he tries to retain. Because every day he forgets a new detail, a wrinkle, a mole, the right tone of the skin under the moonlight. He forgets everything, it goes away, it abandons him, and that is the reason why, before all this absurd called rumbling, he used to do that, to stay up so late looking at two empty cups.</p><p>Because there are people who, when they lose a dear one, swear to see them when they close their eyes; because he feels the opposite, that the memory fades away a little more and more.</p><p>That he's leaving.</p><p>That Erwin is leaving <em>again</em>.</p><p>"Captain…" he listens.</p><p>He doesn't answer. He cannot. Not now.</p><p>Because he's trying to win this battle, the one against his memory.</p><p>He doesn't want to forget how the sun looked at midnight, the golden locks finally disheveled on the forehead after a day as shitty as all the previous ones. He doesn't want to forget the precise curve of those lips smiling at him without those masks of a commander or a demon, but with a naked face, showing him a simple human full of flaws and virtues. He doesn't want to forget the shivers as he listened to that voice whispering cheesy shit with a shyness detached from a man of that age, like a man with a child's voice; like a heart that, for surviving, continues to be that of a child. He doesn't want to forget those lights and shadows that made up the beauty of that body that his lips, always so disinterested in intimacy between bodies, never got tired of kissing. </p><p>He doesn't want to forget Erwin Smith. Nothing about him, not a detail, not the color of a fucking eyelash. He wants to forget nothing, but every day he forgets something new, and he goes away, and this time he does it forever.</p><p>Because who doesn't remember…</p><p>"Captain," he listens again, and the eyelash is gone, and the engine of the flying ship fills his ears dreadfully.</p><p>He recapitulates, trying to remember the voice he just heard.</p><p>Mikasa. </p><p>Levi opens the only healthy eye he has. He looks at her on his left. What little of that girl she used to be is left, but how much she keeps alive at the same time. Her face is that of someone full of life, of longings, of beautiful things, but today more than ever everything that constitutes her is stained by fear. Mikasa knows that perhaps she will have to let go.</p><p>That perhaps the only way to save Eren is…</p><p>"What do you want?" he says as he looks at the floor, as he searches in the shadows of this flying ship for enough darkness to trace the same features again.</p><p>The only way he knows to find peace.</p><p>"Why do you think I protect Eren?"</p><p>The answer is too obvious. However, he doesn't say it.</p><p>To do so would be to admit the reason why he doesn't want to forget that bright image of his memories. That one that, with each defeat, becomes more diffuse, more impossible to remember amid the cruelty of this world that never deserved him, that will never deserve him.</p><p>"You know why," he replies.</p><p>He knows that Mikasa is looking at him. Not because he has left the shadows of the floor, but because he feels it. That shyness, that never-confessed fact bothering them when they are alone, to know their ancestors were from the same clan.</p><p>That is, they know they are relatives, yeah, but they have never been able to admit it out loud.</p><p>It's, among them, like a well-known secret, one that they have sworn to keep to the letter.</p><p>Like her feelings for Eren. </p><p>Like his…</p><p>"It's just that…"</p><p>"I don't understand why you're asking yourself that."</p><p>He looks at her only for an instant out of the corner of his healthy eye: curled up on the floor just ten centimeters from him, she's hugging her legs. Her face looks more childlike than usual. It's out of place in the woman's body she has forged after so many battles, one that grew amid suffering in a different way than his, but also identical.</p><p>Both of them, always protecting that person, the most important, the only one.</p><p>"I promised his mother that…"</p><p><em>Promised</em>, she said.</p><p>Like him, still on this side of existence for having promised something bigger than his life and everyone else's.</p><p>For having promised it to the one who will always urge him to prevail.</p><p>"Why are you asking me?" he says. </p><p>He looks at the opposite corner of the flying ship: Armin talks to Pieck, Jean, Reiner, and Connie; together, they look through a window and ask themselves questions about the rumbling, its range, the real possibilities of stopping it.</p><p>None.</p><p>"There is no one else," Mikasa replies, looking at the same place.</p><p>Then, Levi notices how she looks at the floor, how she focuses on the shadows. Levi imitates her, and there, he no longer finds the eyelash, nor the shades, nor an echo of the soft, masculine sound of that voice.</p><p>There is nothing.</p><p>He remembers nothing at all, not a single shit.</p><p>Just one thing about Erwin Smith.</p><p>What he promised him.</p><p>"You have Armin," he answers.</p><p>"It's not the same."</p><p>"Why not?"</p><p>"Eren said the Ackermans…"</p><p>The well-known secret. They haven't talked about it for years. </p><p>He listens in sickly detail to Mikasa's breathing, which covers the engine, also the voices in the opposite corner.</p><p>The voice of his memories, too, always sweet when speaking to him, always saying the same thing.</p><p><em>Thank you</em>.</p><p>"What did he say?" he replies, tired of this sound that covers everything else. </p><p>"That their power is activated by recognizing a host. That they are… slaves… to that host."</p><p>Mikasa's breath is only overshadowed by a sound, then.</p><p>That of his breath.</p><p>"Slaves…?"</p><p>"He said I protect him because he's my host, not out of my own free will. That is to say…" She stops, and then she takes a deep breath, almost exaggerating, and continues in a whisper. "I thought I knew Eren, I thought I knew who he was, I thought he wasn't someone who could involve innocent people to gain our freedom. I thought he cared about us more than anyone else in the world, that he saved me out of kindness… And, however…"</p><p>"This."</p><p>There is not much to add, not when the tears devoted to Hanji are still on Mikasa's face. </p><p>Not when he still feels the same old fucking pain, the one that he no longer remembers how to cry. </p><p>"Eren saved me," she continues. "He saved me, and from that day, I thought I knew who he was. Now, I don't know if I have only been looking at one of his many faces, or if it was all my imagination, all that I lived with him, all that he is and I am. All I know is that he said he hates me…"</p><p>Levi laughs on the inside, something that nothing in his face betrays. Eren, hating Mikasa?</p><p>But why would he say something like that to her?</p><p>"I just know that," Mikasa ends in a whisper, "I don't know. Since he said all those things, since I heard him tell me <em>I hate you</em>, all I know is that I no longer trust anything I have lived. Everything… was a lie."</p><p>A lie?</p><p>It's easy to understand why Mikasa, although their bond is almost non-existent, is telling him all this. The point is that, according to Eren, the Ackermans are different from the others, and the logic related to their power is more related to titans than humans.</p><p>He could be surprised. All this amount of information could amaze him and change all the concepts that govern his existence, just as they have done with Mikasa. But no - that is bullshit.</p><p>This information changes absolutely nothing.</p><p>It doesn't change the reason why he's looking at the shadows of a dull floor looking for the right color of an eyelash.</p><p>It doesn't change anything he has experienced, anything that he is.</p><p>It never will.</p><p>"Eren tried to push you aside, maybe so you wouldn't stop him, or so you wouldn't get involved; let's say the brat wanted to move you away for a reason he found logical inside that head of his."</p><p>"But…"</p><p>"You, better than anyone else, know what is real and what is not in your life. You lived things, you learned, you suffered, you felt happy. You made choices, and you will continue to make them. Are you going to tell me that everything is a lie? Really? You’re smarter than this."</p><p>"But the… the headaches I suffer."</p><p>What the fuck?</p><p>"What's up with that?"</p><p>"I have had headaches since I was little. Eren said it's because the real me died when my power woke up and that <em>she</em> tries to…"</p><p>"That's the biggest bullshit I ever heard in my fucking life."</p><p>"Excuse me?"</p><p>Levi looks at her; Mikasa, looking at him shyly, has tears in his girlish eyes that are always more stained by experience than they should be. They are a reminder: this world is cruel.</p><p>But it's also beautiful.</p><p>It is because there is still truth behind so many lies. Because there is still beauty behind so much dirt.</p><p>Because he cannot confess his secret, but he can remind Mikasa of hers:</p><p>"You love him," Levi says without blinking, looking at her so intently that it's as if everything behind her is shaking, disappearing. "You do, I’m sure, and if this comforts you, well, I never had a headache."</p><p>"Captain, so you also have a…?"</p><p>"Host? I don't believe a thing Eren told you, so no, I don't have a host."</p><p>Levi looks at the shadow, thinks of the eyelashes, the eyelids, the blue eyes thousands of times more beautiful than the sea, than the world.</p><p>The only beauty he has ever known. </p><p>"Did you love someone too…?"</p><p>The secret, the reason why he looks at this shadow, the pain that pushes him towards a future in which he only hopes to find one thing, one fucking thing in a sea of shit.</p><p>His promise, fulfilled at last.</p><p>"Yeah," he answers, he does it without realizing it, and inside his chest, the pain redefines itself.</p><p>It becomes hope.</p><p>"Captain…"</p><p>"Go with Armin. I have told you all I could."</p><p>"It's just I wish I could…"</p><p>They look at each other for the last time. In doing so, Levi finds something very unique in Mikasa's eyes. It's the same old thing, the cruelty and beauty of the world explained in the lights and shadows that cover her pupils; it's something else.</p><p>For the first time, it's the idea of being relatives finally accepted.</p><p>Because only her could understand why his promise is that which pushes his pain, that pain which by feeling it reminds him that he's still alive, that nothing is lost, that he still can choose what to do.</p><p>To fight for his comrades.</p><p>To fulfill his promise to Erwin.</p><p>To rest.</p><p>A girl's smile appears on Mikasa's lips. As a child, like Erwin's smile looking identical to his eyes in tiny but significant occasions, when Erwin smiled at him when they were alone, without being a commander, without being a demon, without being anything but himself.</p><p>The one who saved him.</p><p>The one whose fight he wants to save by giving it meaning.</p><p>"Captain, thank you," Mikasa says just before getting up, leaving, reaching Armin, moving forward in her yearnings.</p><p>Just like him, both fighting for their promises.</p><p>Whether everything Eren said was true or not would change nothing. Anyway, Levi would be looking at this shadow.</p><p>Anyway, yeah, he would be fighting with his chest full of love for the one who gave meaning to his life, the only owner of his greatest secret. </p><p>Erwin Smith, the person to whom Levi won't hesitate to dedicate himself until death if it helps him to fulfill his mission.</p><p>To return the favor by giving meaning to his sacrifice.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!!! Please allow me to clarify that I tried to put myself in Mikasa's shoes during my consideration of Eren's actions. It's the vision I capture in her character.</p><p>Hope you like it! ♥♥♥</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29553378">The beauty of family</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CGJ/pseuds/CGJ">CGJ</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
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